All Conversationshttp://edge.org/conversations
enThe Next Wavehttp://edge.org/conversation/john_markoff-the-next-wave
<div class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-text field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">A Conversation With</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-edge-author field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="member-name"><a href="/memberbio/john_markoff">John Markoff</a></span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">[7.16.15]</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-linked-image field-type-linkimagefield field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="http://edge.org/sites/default/files/conversation/leadimage/markoff640.jpg" width="640" height="360" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p><em>This can't be the end of human evolution. We have to go someplace else. </em></p>
<p><em>It's quite remarkable. It's moved people off of personal computers. Microsoft's business, while it's a huge monopoly, has stopped growing. There was this platform change. I'm fascinated to see what the next platform is going to be. It's totally up in the air, and I think that some form of augmented reality is possible and real. Is it going to be a science-fiction utopia or a science-fiction nightmare? It's going to be a little bit of both.</em><em style="line-height: 1.6;"> </em></p>
<p>JOHN MARKOFF is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who covers science and technology for <em>The New York Times</em>. His most recent book is the forthcoming <em>Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots. </em><a href="http://edge.org/memberbio/john_markoff" target="_blank"><strong>John Markoff's <em>Edge</em> Bio Page</strong></a></p>
<hr /><p><strong>THE NEXT WAVE</strong></p>
<p>I'm in an interesting place in my career, and it's an interesting time in Silicon Valley. I grew up in Silicon Valley, but it's something I've been reporting about since 1977, which is this Moore's Law acceleration. Over the last five years, another layer has been added to the Moore's Law discussion, with Kurzweil and people like him arguing that we're on the brink of self-aware machines. Just recently, Gates and Musk and Hawking have all been saying that this is an existential threat to humankind. I simply don't see it. If you begin to pick it apart, their argument and the fundamental argument of Silicon Valley, it's all about this exponential acceleration that comes out of the semiconductor industry. I suddenly discovered it was over. </p>
<p>Now, it may not be over forever, but it's clearly paused. All the things that have been driving everything that I do, the kinds of technology that have emerged out of here that have changed the world, have ridden on the fact that the cost of computing doesn't just fall, it falls at an accelerating rate. And guess what? In the last two years, the price of each transistor has stopped falling. That's a profound moment. </p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 09 Jul 2015 17:57:45 +0000edge_manager26459 at http://edge.orgThe Exquisite Role of Dark Matterhttp://edge.org/conversation/priyamvada_natarajan-the-exquisite-role-of-dark-matter
<div class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-text field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">A Conversation With</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-edge-author field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="member-name"><a href="/memberbio/priyamvada_natarajan">Priyamvada Natarajan</a></span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">[6.10.15]</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-linked-image field-type-linkimagefield field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="http://edge.org/sites/default/files/conversation/leadimage/Priya640.jpg" width="640" height="372" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p><em>It is definitely the golden age in cosmology because of this unique confluence of ideas and instruments. We live in a very peculiar universe—one that is dominated by dark matter and dark energy—the true nature of both of these remains elusive. Dark matter does not emit radiation in any wavelength and its presence is inferred by its gravitational influence on the motions of stars and gas in its vicinity. Dark Energy, discovered in 1998, meanwhile is believed to be powering the accelerated expansion of the universe. Despite not knowing what the dark matter particle is or what dark energy really is, we still have a very successful theory of how galaxies form and evolve in a universe with these mysterious and invisible dominant components. Technology has made possible the testing of our cosmological theories at a level that was unprecedented before. All of these experiments have delivered very exciting results, even if they're null results. For example, the LHC, with the discovery of the Higgs, has given us a lot more comfort in the standard model. The Planck and WMAP satellites probing the leftover hiss from the Big Bang—the cosmic microwave background radiation—have shown us that our theoretical understanding of how the early fluctuations in the universe grew and formed the late universe that we see is pretty secure. Our current theory, despite the embarrassing gap of not knowing the true nature of dark matter or dark energy, has been tested to a pretty high degree of precision. </em></p>
<p><em>It's also consequential that the dark matter direct detection experiments have not found anything. That's interesting too, because that's telling us that all these experiments are reaching the limits of their sensitivity, what they were planned for, and they're still not finding anything. This suggests paradoxically that while the overall theory might be consistent with observational data, something is still fundamentally off and possibly awry in our understanding. The challenge in the next decade is to figure out which old pieces don't fit. Is there a pattern that emerges that would tell us, is it a fundamentally new theory of gravity that's needed, or is it a complete rethink of some aspects of particle physics that are needed? Those are the big open questions.</em></p>
<p>PRIYAMVADA NATARAJAN is a professor in the Departments of Astronomy and Physics at Yale University, whose research is focused on exotica in the universe—dark matter, dark energy, and black holes. <a href="http://edge.org/memberbio/priyamvada_natarajan" target="_blank"><strong>Priyamvada Natarajan's</strong> <strong><em>Edge</em> Bio Page</strong></a>. </p>
<hr style="line-height: 18.9090900421143px;" /><p style="line-height: 18.9090900421143px;"><strong>THE EXQUISITE ROLE OF DARK MATTER</strong></p>
<p>I'm a theoretical astrophysicist, working on what I think are some of the most exciting, open and challenging questions. The first is trying to understand the nature of dark matter, and the second question pertains to the physics of black holes. Part of my interest in these two questions, aside from the fact that we now have an enormous amount of data that can help us understand these very enigmatic objects in the universe, is that we have a standard theory—a theoretical model—that works extremely well.</p>
<p>This is a model of structure formation in which dark matter, which is the dominant matter component in the universe, is in the driving seat. It's the scaffolding in which all the first galaxies form, the first stars form, and so on. While we have this exquisite inventory and role for dark matter, we do not know what it is, what it's composed of, what kind of particle it is, when it was created in the universe, and so on and so forth. Similarly, with black holes; we know that they exist. They are real. There is one in the center of our galaxy, which is a few million times the mass of the sun. The one in the center of our galaxy is a dormant black hole. It's not doing very much at present, it was likely active in the past. We see in the early universe that there are massive black holes that are 1000 times, 10,000 times more massive than the one in the center of the galaxy that play a very important role in shaping the properties of the galaxy which hosts them.</p>
<p>What is the life-story of a black hole? How do they grow? How do they form, evolve, and then end up as dead black holes? This is an open question because we know that black holes feed on gas, but what we don't understand is precisely how the gas makes it onto this peculiar surface that all black holes have called the "event horizon." The physics, the astrophysics, if you will, or the details of the flow, are very poorly understood. Once again, these are both problems where we have a good, in fact, a rather specialized, detailed broad-brush understanding; however, the very nature of these objects remains unknown. The situation is very similar to that of dark matter that appears to be ubiquitous.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 04 Jun 2015 19:34:16 +0000edge_manager26376 at http://edge.orgLayers Of Realityhttp://edge.org/conversation/sean_carroll-layers-of-reality
<div class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-text field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">A Conversation With</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-edge-author field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="member-name"><a href="/memberbio/sean_carroll">Sean Carroll</a></span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">[5.28.15]</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-linked-image field-type-linkimagefield field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="http://edge.org/sites/default/files/conversation/leadimage/Carroll.jpg" width="840" height="531" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p><em>We know there's a law of nature, the second law of thermodynamics, that says that disorderliness grows with time. Is there another law of nature that governs the complexity of what happens? That talks about multiple layers of the structures and how they interact with each other? Embarrassingly enough, we don't even know how to define this problem yet. We don't know the right quantitative description for complexity. This is very early days. This is Copernicus, not even Kepler, much less Galileo or Newton. This is guessing at the ways to think about these problems.</em></p>
<p>SEAN CARROLL is a research professor at Caltech and the author of <em>The Particle at the End of the Universe, </em>which won the 2013 Royal Society Winton Prize, and <em>From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time. </em>He has recently been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Gemant Award from the American Institute of Physics, and the Emperor Has No Clothes Award from the Freedom From Religion Foundation.<em><em style="line-height: 1.6;"> </em></em><a href="http://edge.org/memberbio/sean_carroll" style="line-height: 1.6;" target="_blank"><strong>Sean Carroll's <em>Edge </em>Bio Page</strong></a></p>
<hr /><p><strong>LAYERS OF REALITY</strong></p>
<p>I've always studied the laws of physics. I've always been curious about how the universe works, where it comes from, what are the rules that govern the behavior of the universe at the deepest level, so I do physics for a living. I study cosmology and the Big Bang and what happened before the Big Bang, if anything. It's a system of things that hooks up in very complicated ways to our human scale lives. There's the natural world that scientists study, and we human beings are part of the natural world.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 07 May 2015 20:05:52 +0000edge_manager26352 at http://edge.orgWe Need A Modern Origin Story: A Big Historyhttp://edge.org/conversation/david_christian-we-need-a-modern-origin-story-a-big-history
<div class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-text field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">A Conversation With</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-edge-author field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="member-name"><a href="/memberbio/david_christian">David Christian</a></span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">[5.21.15]</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-linked-image field-type-linkimagefield field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="http://edge.org/sites/default/files/conversation/leadimage/Christian_0.jpg" width="640" height="360" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p><em>In modern science, and I include the humanities here, science in a German sense of science—rigorous scholarship across all domains—in modern science we've gotten used to the idea that science doesn't offer meaning in the way that institutional religions did in the past. I'm increasingly thinking that this idea that modernity puts us in a world without meaning—philosophers have banged on about this for a century-and-a-half—may be completely wrong. We may be living in an intellectual building site, where a new story is being constructed. It's vastly more powerful than the previous stories because it's the first one that is global. It's not anchored in a particular culture or a particular society. This is an origin story that works for humans in Beijing as well as in Buenos Aires. </em></p>
<p><em>It's a global origin story, and it sums over vastly more information than any early origin story. This is very, very powerful stuff. It's full of meaning. We're now at the point where, across so many domains, the amount of information, of good, rigorous ideas, is so rich that we can tease out that story. </em></p>
<p>DAVID CHRISTIAN is Professor of History, Macquarie University, Sydney; Author, <em>Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. </em><a href="http://edge.org/memberbio/david_christian" target="_blank"><strong>David Christian's <em>Edge</em> Bio Page</strong></a></p>
<hr /><p style="line-height: 18.9090900421143px;"><strong>WE NEED A MODERN ORIGIN STORY: A BIG HISTORY</strong></p>
<p>I'm a Russian historian, and I love teaching Russian history. I taught it during the Cold War when it seemed exceptionally significant. Teaching it in Australia, where I was, was a bit like talking about the dark side. I felt my students needed to know about that world.</p>
<p>I'm not Russian, but I was teaching Russian history and eventually I realized I was giving the subliminal message that humans are divided, at a fundamental level, into competing tribes. Having lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, I remember it vividly. I was a schoolboy in England where this tribalism threatened to blow us all up. That was a very vivid experience for me. I thought, for historians to keep teaching this subliminal message—that we're divided by tribes—is not a good thing. </p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 30 Apr 2015 20:54:37 +0000edge_manager26347 at http://edge.orgPopper Versus Baconhttp://edge.org/conversation/peter_coveney-popper-versus-bacon
<div class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-text field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">A Conversation With</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-edge-author field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="member-name"><a href="/memberbio/peter_coveney">Peter Coveney</a></span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">[5.7.15]</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-linked-image field-type-linkimagefield field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="http://edge.org/sites/default/files/conversation/leadimage/coveney640.jpg" width="640" height="397" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p><em>People have to go around measuring things. There's no escape from that for most of that type of work. There's a deep relationship between the two. No one's going to come up with a model that works without going and comparing with experiment. But it is the intelligent use of experimental measurements that we're after there because that goes to this concept of Bayesian methods. I will perform the right number of experiments to make measurements of, say, the time series evolution of a given set of proteins. From those data, when things are varying in time, I can map that on to my deterministic Popperian model and infer what's the most likely value of all the parameters that would be Popperian ones that would fit into the model. It's an intelligent interaction between them that's necessary in many complicated situations. </em></p>
<p><strong>INTRODUCTION<br />
by <a href="http://edge.org/memberbio/john_brockman" target="_blank">John Brockman</a></strong></p>
<p>There’s a massive clash of philosophies at the heart of modern science. One philosophy, called Baconianism after Sir Francis Bacon, neglects theoretical underpinning and says just make observations, collect data, and interrogate them. This approach is widespread in modern biology and medicine, where it’s often called informatics. But there’s a quite different philosophy, traditionally used in physics, formulated by another British Knight, Sir Karl Popper. In this approach, we make predictions from models and we test them, then iterate our theories.</p>
<p> In modern medicine you might find it strange that many people don’t think in theoretical terms. It's a shock to many physical scientists when they encounter this attitude, particularly when it is accompanied by a conflation of correlation with causation. Meanwhile, in physics, it is extremely hard to go from modeling simple situations consisting of a handful of particles to the complexity of the real world, and to combine theories that work at different levels, such as macroscopic theories (where there is an arrow of time) and microscopic ones (where theories are indifferent to the direction of time).</p>
<p>At University College London, physical chemist Peter Coveney, is using theory, modeling and supercomputing to predict material properties from basic chemical information, and to mash up biological knowledge at a range of levels, from biomolecules to organs, into timely and predictive clinical information to help doctors. In doing this, he is testing a novel way to blend the Baconian and Popperian approaches and have already had some success when it comes to personalized medicine and predicting the properties of next generation composites.</p>
<p class="rteright">—JB</p>
<p>PETER COVENEY holds a chair in Physical Chemistry, and is director of the Centre for Computational Science at University College London and co-author, with Roger Highfield, of <em>The Arrow of Time</em> and <em>Frontiers of Complexity.</em> <strong><a href="http://edge.org/memberbio/peter_coveney" target="_blank">Peter Coveney's <em>Edge</em> Bio Page.</a></strong></p>
<hr /></div></div></div>Thu, 23 Apr 2015 17:56:43 +0000edge_manager26339 at http://edge.orgTHIS IDEA MUST DIE: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progresshttp://edge.org/conversation/john_brockman-this-idea-must-die-scientific-theories-that-are-blocking-progress
<div class="field field-name-field-sub-title field-type-text field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">#5 NoCal Nonfiction Bestseller List #19 New York Times Science Best-Seller List</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-text field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Edited by</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-edge-author field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="member-name"><a href="/memberbio/john_brockman">John Brockman</a></span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">[5.3.15]</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-linked-image field-type-linkimagefield field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="http://edge.org/sites/default/files/conversation/leadimage/9780062374356_Cover.png" width="600" height="909" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <h1><img alt="" border="0" height="137" src="http://www.edge.org/images/ThisIdeaMustDie_ecardbanner.png" usemap="#Map" width="600" /><map name="Map" id="Map"><area coords="35,26,136,58" href="http://bit.ly/1J4oJJ2" shape="rect" target="_blank" /><area coords="142,24,245,60" href="http://bit.ly/1GqoRVu" shape="rect" target="_blank" /><area coords="250,26,351,58" href="http://bit.ly/1yn0Bhh" shape="rect" target="_blank" /><area coords="358,27,457,57" href="http://bit.ly/1AIqRzU" shape="rect" target="_blank" /><area coords="467,24,581,58" href="http://bit.ly/1CxtmHr" shape="rect" target="_blank" /></map></h1>
</div></div></div>Fri, 30 Jan 2015 14:43:31 +0000edge_administrator26274 at http://edge.orgThis Is My Vision Of "Life"http://edge.org/conversation/richard_dawkins-this-is-my-vision-of-life
<div class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-text field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">A Conversation With </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-edge-author field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="member-name"><a href="/memberbio/richard_dawkins">Richard Dawkins</a></span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">[4.30.15]</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-linked-image field-type-linkimagefield field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="http://edge.org/sites/default/files/conversation/leadimage/dawkins.4.11.15.web__0.jpg" width="640" height="380" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p><em>My vision of life is that everything extends from replicators, which are in practice DNA molecules on this planet. The replicators reach out into the world to influence their own probability of being passed on. Mostly they don't reach further than the individual body in which they sit, but that's a matter of practice, not a matter of principle. The individual organism can be defined as that set of phenotypic products which have a single route of exit of the genes into the future. That's not true of the cuckoo/reed warbler case, but it is true of ordinary animal bodies. So the organism, the individual organism, is a deeply salient unit. It's a unit of selection in the sense that I call a "vehicle". </em></p>
<p><em>There are two kinds of unit of selection. The difference is a semantic one. They're both units of selection, but one is the replicator, and what it does is get itself copied. So more and more copies of itself go into the world. The other kind of unit is the vehicle. It doesn't get itself copied. What it does is work to copy the replicators which have come down to it through the generations, and which it's going to pass on to future generations. So we have this individual replicator dichotomy. They're both units of selection, but in different senses. It's important to understand that they are different senses. </em></p>
<p>
RICHARD DAWKINS is an evolutionary biologist; Emeritus Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, Oxford; Author, <em>The Selfish Gene; The Extended Phenotype; Climbing Mount Improbable; The God Delusion; An Appetite For Wonder; </em>and (forthcoming) <em>A Brief Candle In The Dark. </em><strong><a href="/memberbio/richard_dawkins">Richard Dawkins's <em>Edge</em> Bio Page</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>INTRODUCTION<br />
by <a href="http://edge.org/memberbio/john_brockman">John Brockman</a></strong></p>
<p>On January 2, 1997, <em>Edge</em> published in its inaugural edition, "Science, Delusion, And The Appetite For Wonder: A Talk With Richard Dawkins", the complete text of the Richard Dimbleby Lecture which he had delivered a few weeks earlier on BBC Television in his role at that time as the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.</p>
<p>Over the years Dawkins has been among the most frequent (and valued) <em>Edge </em>contributors, and our pages are filled with his elegant writing and brilliant thinking. On a trip to England this month, it occurred to me all of his contributions on <em>Edge </em>had been the result either of his public speaking or his writing. I realized that I had never asked him to sit down for a one-to-one videotaped interview. After making arrangements, we met at <span style="line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">noon on Saturday, April 11th, </span>in the Enthoven Room of New College to have an <em>Edge</em> conversation. I am pleased to present the video and the transcript below. [ED NOTE: The accompanying soundtrack of the New College bells for the first 22 minutes was not part of the plan.]</p>
<p class="rteright">—JB</p>
<p><strong style="line-height: 18.9090900421143px;"><a href="http://edge.org/conversation/richard_dawkins-this-is-my-vision-of-life#rc">THE REALITY CLUB:</a> </strong><a href="http://edge.org/conversation/richard_dawkins-this-is-my-vision-of-life#26349" style="line-height: 23.1111106872559px;">Nikolai Renedo, Patrick Forber, Daniel C. Dennett</a></p>
<p><a href="http://edge.org/conversation/richard_dawkins-this-is-my-vision-of-life#26349" style="line-height: 23.1111106872559px;">Nikolai Renedo, Patrick Forber, Daniel C. Dennett</a>:</p>
<p>"Dawkins' brilliant distinction in <em>The Selfish Gene</em> (1976) between <em>replicators</em> and <em>vehicles</em> provided a clear framework for understanding how the wonders of life arise in a world dominated by the tedious laws of physics, and in the light of all we have learned subsequently about the details at the molecular level, his 1976 language strikes us as sometimes wonderfully prescient—anticipating "selfish DNA" or genomic parasites, for instance—but not perfect, of course. He acknowledges the slack in a few phrases here. The concept of <em>gene</em> has undergone some transformations, for instance, so are replicators genes? "Let's call them ‘genes' because nowadays they <em>pretty much</em> [our italics] all are genes." And he himself, in<em>The Extended Phenotype</em> (1982), showed that the set of phenotypic products that combine to enhance the futures of the replicators are not all in the organismic vehicle."</p>
<p>"We would like to propose a friendly amendment that will allow for more accurate identification of these two entities, the replicator and the vehicle<em>.</em> ". . .[<a href="http://edge.org/conversation/richard_dawkins-this-is-my-vision-of-life#26349">continue</a>]</p>
<hr /></div></div></div>Mon, 27 Apr 2015 01:30:30 +0000edge_manager26340 at http://edge.orgWhy some scientific ideas must diehttp://edge.org/conversation/john_brockman-why-some-scientific-ideas-must-die
<div class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-text field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Lawrence Pollard Interviews</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-edge-author field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="member-name"><a href="/memberbio/john_brockman">John Brockman</a></span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">[4.29.15]</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-linked-image field-type-linkimagefield field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02q7y0x" title="John Brockman - Newsday" target="_self" rel="" class=""><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="http://edge.org/sites/default/files/conversation/leadimage/BBCJB.png" width="798" height="513" alt="" title="John Brockman - Newsday" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <blockquote><p><em>JB: It all started with a young scientist named Laurie Santos at a conference that I ran saying, “How do we get rid of some of these ideas that are just standing in front of us? Just blocking everybody?”</em></p>
<p><em>LP: What are the ideas that blind us now do you think? And blind us into confusion, and argument, and that kind of controversy?</em></p>
<p><em>JB: Name a field. ... It comes down to: is science advertising or is it argument?</em></p>
<p><em>LP: Your favorite. Which would be one of yours?</em></p>
<p><em>JB: Daniel Kahneman has studied human rationality and found out that characteristics we thought we had as humans aren’t necessarily the case. We are not </em>Homo Economicus<em>, we’re not the rational human beings we thought we were. A lot of what we do is pre-conscious and without acknowledgement.</em></p>
<p><em>LP: Now that’s interesting. So that’s a big idea about who we are and how we control our lives with rationality and free will. Another idea was the idea of love as well. This is one that attracts criticism from one of your contributors. So tell us a bit more about that. ...</em></p>
</blockquote>
</div></div></div>Wed, 29 Apr 2015 15:43:40 +0000edge_manager26345 at http://edge.orgExistential Riskhttp://edge.org/conversation/jaan_tallinn-existential-risk
<div class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-text field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">A Conversation With</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-edge-author field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="member-name"><a href="/memberbio/jaan_tallinn">Jaan Tallinn</a></span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">[4.16.15]</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-linked-image field-type-linkimagefield field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="http://edge.org/sites/default/files/conversation/leadimage/Tallinn_0.jpg" width="600" height="337" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p><em>The reasons why I'm engaged in trying to lower the existential risks has to do with the fact that I'm a convinced consequentialist. We have to take responsibility for modeling the consequences of our actions, and then pick the actions that yield the best outcomes. Moreover, when you start thinking about—in the pallet of actions that you have—what are the things that you should pay special attention to, one argument that can be made is that you should pay attention to areas where you expect your marginal impact to be the highest. There are clearly very important issues about inequality in the world, or global warming, but I couldn't make a significant difference in these areas. </em></p>
<p>JAAN TALLINN is a co-founder of The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at University of Cambridge, UK as well as The Future of Life Institute in Cambridge, MA. He is also a founding engineer of Kazaa and Skype. <a href="http://edge.org/memberbio/jaan_tallinn"><strong>Jaan Tallinn's </strong><em><strong>Edge</strong></em><strong> Bio Page</strong></a></p>
<p><strong>INTRODUCTION</strong><br />
by Max Tegmark</p>
<p>I find Jaan Tallinn remarkable in more ways than one. His rags-to-riches entrepreneur story is inspiring in its own right, starting behind the Iron Curtain and ending up connecting the world with Skype. How many times have you skyped? How many people do you know who created a new verb?</p>
<p>Most successful entrepreneurs I know went on to become serial entrepreneurs. In contrast, Jaan chose a different path: he asked himself how he could leverage his success to do as much good as possible in the world, developed a plan, and dedicated his life to it. His ambition makes even the goals of Skype seem modest: reduce existential risk, i.e., the risk that we humans do something as stupid as go extinct due to poor planning. </p>
<p>Already after a few short years, Jaan’s impact is remarkable. He is a key supporter of a global network of non-profit existential risk organizations including The Future of Humanity Institute, The Machine Intelligence Research Institute, The Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at University of Cambridge, and The Future of Life Institute, the last two of which he co-founded.</p>
<p>I’ve had the pleasure to work with him on The Future of Life Institute from day one, and if you’ve heard of our recent conference, open letter and well-funded research program on keeping artificial intelligence beneficial, then I’d like to make clear that none of this would have happened if it weren’t for Jaan’s support. If you’re an intelligent life form reading this text millions of years from now and marvel at how life is flourishing, you may owe your existence to Jaan.</p>
<p>MAX TEGMARK is a Physicist, MIT; Researcher, Precision Cosmology; Founder, Future of Life Institute; Author, <em>Our Mathematical Universe. </em><strong><a href="http://edge.org/memberbio/max_tegmark">Max Tegmark's <em>Edge</em> Bio Page</a></strong></p>
<hr /><p style="line-height: 18.9090900421143px;"><strong>EXISTENTIAL RISK</strong></p>
<p>I split my activity between various organizations. I don't have one big umbrella organization that I represent. I use various commercial organizations and investment companies such as Metaplanet Holdings, which is my primary investment vehicle,to invest in various startups, including artificial intelligence companies. Then I have one nonprofit foundation called Solenum Foundation that I use to support various so-called existential risk organizations around the world.</p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 30 Jan 2015 19:15:22 +0000edge_manager26276 at http://edge.orgDeath Is Optionalhttp://edge.org/conversation/yuval_noah_harari-daniel_kahneman-death-is-optional
<div class="field field-name-field-byline field-type-text field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">A Conversation:</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-edge-author field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="member-name"><a href="/memberbio/yuval_noah_harari">Yuval Noah Harari</a></span>, <span class="member-name"><a href="/memberbio/daniel_kahneman">Daniel Kahneman</a></span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">[3.4.15]</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-linked-image field-type-linkimagefield field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="http://edge.org/sites/default/files/conversation/leadimage/yuval640.jpg" width="640" height="360" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-teaser"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p><em>Once you really solve a problem like direct brain-computer interface ... when brains and computers can interact directly, that's it, that's the end of history, that's the end of biology as we know it. Nobody has a clue what will happen once you solve this. If life can break out of the organic realm into the vastness of the inorganic realm, you cannot even begin to imagine what the consequences will be, because your imagination at present is organic. So if there is a point of Singularity, by definition, we have no way of even starting to imagine what's happening beyond that. </em></p>
<p class="rtecenter"><em><img alt="" src="/images/kahneman640.360,jpg" /></em></p>
<p>YUVAL NOAH HARARI, Lecturer, Department of History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is the author of <em>Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind</em>. <a href="https://edge.org/memberbio/yuval_noah_harari"><strong>Yuval Noah Harari's</strong> <em><strong>Edge</strong></em> <strong>Bio Page</strong></a></p>
<p>DANIEL KAHNEMAN is the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, 2002 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, 2013. He is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology Emeritus, Princeton, and author of <em>Thinking Fast and Slow.</em> <a href="http://edge.org/memberbio/daniel_kahneman"><strong>Daniel Kahneman's</strong> <em><strong>Edge</strong></em> <strong>Bio Page</strong></a></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://edge.org/conversation/yuval_noah_harari-daniel_kahneman-death-is-optional#rc">THE REALITY CLUB</a>: <a href="http://edge.org/conversation/yuval_noah_harari-daniel_kahneman-death-is-optional#26311" target="_blank">Nicholas Carr</a>, <a href="http://edge.org/conversation/yuval_noah_harari-daniel_kahneman-death-is-optional#26313" target="_blank">Steven Pinker</a>, <a href="http://edge.org/conversation/yuval_noah_harari-daniel_kahneman-death-is-optional#26318" target="_blank">Yuval Noah Harari</a>, <a href="http://edge.org/conversation/yuval_noah_harari-daniel_kahneman-death-is-optional#26319" target="_blank">Kevin Kelly</a></strong></p>
<hr /><p class="rtecenter">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="365" mozallowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" src="//player.vimeo.com/video/120845055" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="640"></iframe></p>
<hr /><h1><strong style="line-height: 23.1111106872559px;">Death Is Optional</strong></h1>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374275637%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAIUDIBB5W2YOHL3CQ%26tag%3Dedgeorg-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0374275637" style="text-align: center; line-height: 16.6399993896484px;" target="_blank"><img alt="" src="/images/dk.jpg" style="line-height: 16.6399993896484px; float: right;" /></a><br /><strong>DANIEL KAHNEMAN: </strong>Before asking you what are the questions you are asking yourself, I want to say that I've now read your book <em>Sapiens</em> twice and in that book you do something that I found pretty extraordinary. You cover the history of mankind. It seems to be like an invitation for people to dismiss it as superficial, so I read it, and I read it again, because in fact, I found so many ideas that were enriching. I want to talk about just one or two of them as examples.</p>
<p>Your chapter on science is one of my favorites and so is the title of that chapter, "The Discovery of Ignorance." It presents the idea that science began when people discovered that there was ignorance, and that they could do something about it, that this was really the beginning of science. I love that phrase.</p>
<p>And in fact, I loved that phrase so much that I went and looked it up. Because I thought, where did he get it? My search of the phrase showed that all the references were to you. And there are many other things like that in the book.</p>
<p>How did you transition from that book to what you're doing now?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-A-Brief-History-Humankind/dp/0062316095%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAIUDIBB5W2YOHL3CQ%26tag%3Dedgeorg-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0062316095" style="text-align: center; line-height: 16.6399993896484px;" target="_blank"><img alt="" src="/images/yh.jpg" style="line-height: 16.6399993896484px; float: right;" /></a></p>
<p><strong>YUVAL NOAH HARARI: </strong>It came naturally. My big question at present is what is the human agenda for the 21st century. And this is a direct continuation from covering the history of humankind, from the appearance of <em>Homo Sapiens </em>until today, so when you finish that, immediately, you think, okay, what next? I'm not trying to predict the future, which is impossible, now more than ever. Nobody has a clue how the world will look like in, say, 40, 50 years. We may know some of the basic variables but, if you really understand what's going on in the world, you know that it's impossible to have any good prediction for the coming decades. This is the first time in history that we're in this situation.</p>
<p>I'm trying to do something that is the opposite of predicting the future. I'm trying to identify what are the possibilities, what is the horizon of possibilities that we are facing? And what will happen from among these possibilities? We still have a lot of choice in this regard.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 19 Feb 2015 21:36:06 +0000edge_manager26293 at http://edge.org